Brit Awards 2012: rerun of last year or full of surprises?

Coldplay could blow the roof off the O2 as Blur's Alex James is covered in Dairylea confetti

THE BRIT AWARDS are back in the O2 Arena, James Corden is presenting again, Adele is set for a repeat performance and Rihanna will raunch up proceedings for the fourth year running. As Bernadette McNulty points out in The Daily Telegraph, the Brits 2012 look uncannily like a rerun of the Brits 2011.

But history tells us that it's just when a performance is looking predictable that Jarvis Cocker will run out on stage to flash his behind. So will it be a boring Brits or can we expect any surprises tonight?

Adele "looking sad near a piano" and Ed Sheeran doing his "weird half-smile thing" are included in Peter Robinson's list of predictions in The Guardian today but his whimsical forecast holds more exciting prospects too.

In light of Alex James' love for cheese, Robinson imagines the glitter cannon marking the finale of Blur's performance will be stocked with the wrappers of 7,000 Dairylea triangles. Emeli Sandé's haircut could launch its own career, he continues, and Bjork might arrive wearing a fake swan – before Lady Gaga arrives wearing a fake Bjork wearing a real swan.

If that's not exciting enough, viewers might even see the venue's roof explode. Event organisers fear Coldplay's ambitious pyrotechnics could blow the lid off London's O2 Arena, according to The Sun. One source said it has been a "logistical nightmare" with people running around the arena with clipboards for weeks trying to sort it out.

Meanwhile, William Hill is offering 12/1 odds that an act will pour a drink over a politician, as Chumbawumba did to John Prescott in 1998, and 8/1 that an act will walk onto the stage and try to claim another act's award, as DJ Brandon Block did in 2000.

And maybe Adele won't win everything for which she is nominated. As the Mirror points out, the best single award, along with best group and breakthrough act, is not decided by the "wise, rational voting panel of music industry experts and insiders but by the wonderfully partisan great British public/hysterical teenage girls...

"So don't be surprised if One Direction's What Makes You Beautiful causes the major upset of the evening."